Black Knight 02 - Back in Black (16 page)

"Yeah, that works, too." I said, sitting on the couch.
 

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?" He said, as he reached down beside the entertainment center and stuck the USB key into a computer I couldn't promise I'd ever seen before. He grabbed the remote and sat on the couch next to me. "I set this up a couple weeks ago while you were out on a surveillance run. We can surf the Internet with the TV as a monitor, or use it to review case files, like we're doing now."
 

"You did this all for porn, didn't you?" I asked, smirking at his uncomfortable blush.
 

"You want to go back to working on a laptop?" Greg asked, punching me in the shoulder.
 

"Ow! No, this is great. Thanks, bro." We spent the next couple of hours looking over case files with nothing to show for it. The more we looked at photos of brutalized young men, the less we knew. As the sun came up, we were no closer to any clues than we were when we sat down, and a whole lot grumpier.
 

Just as I was about to give up and get some sleep, something struck me. "Dude?"
 

"Yeah?" Greg grunted.
 

"What did the crime scene techs say about all the earlier attacks?" I asked.
 

"Man, they said a lot of stuff, but it was mostly a whole lot of nothing." My grumpy partner replied.
 

"Yeah, but what did they say about where the attacks happened?"
 

"What do you mean?" Greg asked.
 

"I mean, were the victims attacked there, or were they attacked somewhere else and dropped there?" I said. There was an idea forming, but I wasn't sure what it meant.
 

"The crime scene reports said that none of the assaults occurred where the men were found, but the victims could remember nothing about the attacks."
 

"So why was Stephen found where he was attacked, and none of the others?" I asked.
 

"I have no idea, dude. You'd have to ask the troll that beat him up."

"That's exactly what I plan on doing, but I think first I need to ask a few questions of our other victims."
 

"Jimmy, dude, I don't know if you missed the memo, but they all said they can't remember anything about their attacks."
 

"Man, you
are
tired if you believe everything a victim says about a crime." I replied.
 

"Why would they lie, man?"
 

"I don't know. That's why we're going to see them tomorrow night. Now let's get some rest." I got up and headed to bed. "Don't stay up all day on the preteen chat sites, you perv."
 

Greg threw a pillow at me. I caught it and winged it back at him. "What's to say these victims won't just lie to us, too?" He asked as I got to me bedroom door.
 

"They will. That's why we're taking Sabrina."
 

"Because she's a cop?" He asked.
 

"No, because I'm less likely to eat them in front of her. We'll mojo them into telling us the truth, assuming our mojo works on fairies."
 

"And if it doesn't?"
 

"Then we make Sabrina wait in the car while we have dinner."
 
I went into my room to grab a little sleep, leaving Greg to whatever trouble he was going to get into online while I slept. I just hoped he wasn't hacking online poker sites again. The last thing I needed was a beef with the no-necks that own those things.
 

I slept through the day, waking up just once to find Greg snoring on the couch, wireless keyboard in hand and an abandoned chat window on the TV. I shut everything down, tossed a blanket on him, and went back to bed.

I awoke early in the evening the next night to the smell of coffee and the sound of the washer running. I knew before I even got out of bed that Sabrina had gotten there, because Greg does laundry about as often as I go tanning. I stumbled out of my room to see her standing over my partner's prone form. He was still on the couch, blanket tangled around his waist, with the keyboard balanced somehow on his forehead. She was looking down at him, shaking her head and chuckling as I walked up to her.
 

"Good morning, evening, whatever." She said, still watching Greg snore.
 

I looked down at his gaping maw and chuckled. I reached down and pinched his nose shut, grabbing Sabrina's coffee in my other hand. I slowly poured coffee into Greg's mouth until he jerked awake, spluttering coffee everywhere. I handed the cup back to Sabrina and tried not to fall over laughing. Greg mumbled something rude about me and farm animals and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth.
 

"That was mean." Sabrina said, hiding her laughter behind her coffee cup.
 

"Soulless bloodsucking monster, remember? Now did you make more of that, or just the one cup?" I walked over to the counter and poured myself a cup. I got no nutrition out of coffee, of course, but nobody does. Caffeine, however, is just as important to a vampire as it is to most humans. That's why my coffeemaker cost almost as much as my television. Some things you just don't scrimp on. I poured a second cup in Greg's red "Interview with the Vampire" mug and left it for him. "Did you start the laundry, too?" I asked as I flopped onto the sofa.

"I did, and sit up, you slacker." I did as she asked and she sat next to me on the couch. She picked up Greg's wireless keyboard and mouse and opened up the case files. Just then Greg came back out of the bathroom, grabbed his coffee and joined us in the den.
 

"I built us a virtual case board last night after you went to bed." He said, reaching for the mouse. Sabrina tossed it over, and with a few clicks he had a full display up on our wall-mounted LCD TV. And here I thought we bought the thing for video games. "If we look at all the crime scene photos, you'll notice a few things show up in common at all of the attacks before Stephen's."
 

"First, there is never enough blood for the injuries the victims have sustained, meaning that the attacks occurred someplace else, and the victims were dumped there." He clicked the mouse a few more times, and pictures zoomed in and out.
 

"Secondly, there were no shoe-, foot- or fingerprints left at the scene, including the victims." More clicking and zooming, and my sleep-addled head was starting to spin a little.
 

"And thirdly, each dumping took place in a public alleyway between eleven PM and two AM." He clicked a couple more times before I reached over and snatched the mouse out of his hand. I tossed it across the room and glared at him.
 

"What do we know from all of this?" I asked.
 

"Not much." He admitted. "The time of the body dumps is significant, because it was early enough in the evening that there should have been witnesses, but there weren't. I can't imagine a nine-foot monster carrying a bleeding dude down an alley and nobody noticing it, so there's something screwy going on there."
 

"Do you think it was magic?" Sabrina asked.
 

"Before a couple of days ago, I would have said no way, but those were the good old days, when I thought trolls only happened in storybooks and that fairy was just an insulting term for gay men. Now, I don't know." Greg looked at me with the sad puppy eyes, and I gave him back his mouse.
 

He called up another set of images on the screen and said, "These are the first five victims. All male, all young, all in good shape, and all beaten to a pulp before they were found. They told police that they remembered nothing about their attacks, and that they had been assaulted right where they were found. Obviously this last part is a lie, based on the forensic evidence, so it stands to reason that they may have been lying about what they remembered as well."
 

"So we're back to my plan." I stood up and went towards my room.
 

"And exactly what plan is that, Jimmy?" Sabrina asked to my back.
 

"We ask them what they remember."
 

"And if they continue to lie?" She asked.
 

"We mojo them." Why did I feel like my life was just the same conversation, over and over again?
 

"And if your mojo doesn't..."

I cut her off. "You don't want to know. Now if it's okay with you, I'll go put on pants."
 

I closed the door as they shouted "Please!" in unison.
 

Chapter 24

We took Greg's car, because let's face it; it's just a cooler ride. We pulled up at our first victim's townhome a little after seven. After all I was always taught not to interrupt anyone's dinner with tales of fairies and troll attacks.
 

"Victim Number One is Gerald, or Jerry, Smithson. Jerry is a mortgage officer at a bank, and has no partner that we know of. He had no visitors at the hospital and a sister from Wisconsin is listed as his emergency contact. He lives alone with his pug, Whitfield." Greg read from his iPad. I knew it was a mistake to let him bring that thing, he just couldn't resist showing off his new toy.
 

"Stevie's partner works for a bank, do you think that's a connection?" Sabrina asked.
 

"I don't want to dismiss it out of hand, but given that two of the five largest employers in Charlotte are banks, I don't think it's statistically significant." Greg said, looking back at his tablet. "Besides, none of the other victims or their partners work for a bank or are connected to banking, other than having an account or two."
 

"Fair enough," she replied.
 

We got out of the car and Sabrina knocked on the door. A balding man in his early thirties answered, sporting a reddish. He was wearing the official uniform of the off-duty banker, a polo shirt and khaki pants, with expensive shoes. He looked up at Sabrina and said "Detective Law, how nice of you to come by. Have you caught the monster that attacked me and has been assaulting other men around Charlotte?"
 

"No, Mr. Smithson, we have not had any luck finding the person or persons responsible for your assault. But we have a few more questions for you regarding a new line of investigation. May we come in?" Sabrina asked.
 

"Of course, of course, how rude of me. Please come in. And you are?" He asked me as Greg and I stepped into his home. I felt that funny tingle that I got whenever I entered a person's home. We really can't go in without being invited, but Sabrina had slickly wrangled an invitation for all three of us.
 

I held out my hand and said "Jimmy Black, Mr. Smithson. My partner Greg and I are private investigators. We're assisting the police in this case."
 

"Black Knight Investigations at your service, sir." Greg interjected, handing Smithson a card. I never carried the things. Probably for the best, since they all had my cell phone number on them and I kept leaving phones in the wrong dimension. We shook hands all around and Jerry showed us into his living room. Apparently the stereotype about all gay men having good taste was based in fact, because Smithson's place looked like something out of a magazine.
 

"Now," Jerry said after he politely offered us all drinks and we all politely declined. "What new avenues are you exploring in the case, and what can I do to help you?"
 

"First of all, Mr. Smithson, let's fill you in on what we know." Sabrina started with a glance to me. I gave her a tiny nod, letting her know that I was listening to Jerry's heartbeat to pick up lies or nervousness. "We know that you weren't attacked in the alley, that you were left there. We know what attacked you, and we know the secret of your nature. What we don't know is why you were attacked, and why you wouldn't tell us about it earlier."
 

Smithson's heart was beating like a hummingbird's wings on crystal meth, and he reached over to an end table and took a long pull from a beer before he answered. He took a deep breath, looked straight at us, and shimmered slightly. Where seconds before had been sitting a mild-mannered banker who shaved his head to hide the fact that he was going prematurely bald, now sat a fairy with chiseled features, long black hair tipped in white and the pointed ears that gave their species away no matter how big the crowd. "Really, Detective?" he asked in cultured tones and a slight accent. "I was just going to tell you that I was beaten half to death by trolls and dropped in the alley. Oh, and by the way, I'm a fairy. How well do you think that would have gone over in the police station?"
 

"I can see why you wouldn't want to go into all the details, but why so quick to drop the masquerade now?" Sabrina asked.
 

"Well, my dear, you come waltzing in here with a pair of vampires and I have to know the jig is up, don't I? Now, are you going to kill me here, or are you taking me back there to do the deed?" He looked pretty calm for somebody who thought we were there to kill him.